Doug Liman Tapped By Sony for Spy Adventure ‘The Tourist’

Before you start thinking a reboot of the Angelina Jolie-Johnny Depp dud is getting rebooted, let me assure you that is not the case.

Instead, Sony Pictures have obtained the rights to Olen Steinhauer‘s trilogy of novels — also, incidentally, about spies — and, as Deadline reports, are locking Doug Liman to direct what they almost surely hope is the beginning of a new franchise. (Well, that’s me making an assumption based on the almost comically obvious.) When you need a studio-friendly helmer and the guy behind The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Fair Game is available…

Matt Corman and Chris Ord, creators of the Liman-produced series Covert Affairs, are being tasked to write the film, in which Milo Weaver — a “burned out spy for a clandestine US intelligence agency that battles global organized crime, terrorists and the like” — is put back into action after a killer he’d been after is found dead.

Liman is on track to direct The Tourist after completing All You Need Is KillalongsideTom Cruise, Emily Blunt, and Charlotte Riley, putting this one a few years out from right now. As someone who isn’t gripped by that summary or, for that matter, almost any film the director’s ever worked on, I can wait.

Now, just find a title which makes us forget that silly trifle from late 2010.

Are Steinhauer‘s books good material for a new series, and is Liman a good pick to make that series happen?